Translating GZDoom's text content. Read if you want to help

[Graf Zahl]

My sister was actually present when a Brit almost said as much to her when the Brit overheard someone arguing with the ticket collector at an airport. "It's terrible, they're just speaking German. I can't understand a thing." (Remember, this person was merely in the queue, not the conversation.) The best part? The conversation was taking place in Tegel airport, Berlin! My sister took great joy in pointing this out in no uncertain terms.

Are you sure it wasn't an American...?

[Enjay]

Are you sure it wasn't an American...?

They have increasingly been taking that role over from us.

Imo the hardest thing is the combination of the both, "Mort et souffrance" was a consideration, but whose? The humans, or the demons? Should it be seen as enjoyable, exciting, or something that's bad and needs to be stopped? I personally interpreted it as a negative (as in the Earth's population getting slaughtered), but Gibbitude makes it sound like it's meant to be the reverse.

I have taken it as there is lots of pain, suffering, injury and blood ahead for all parties concerned:

The humans being annihilated by the demons.
The demons, in turn, being crushed by you (the Doomguy).
The pain and unpleasantness of the task.

But, yes, there is also the fact that it is (ultimately) a game and, the player is revelling in all that wanton death and destruction. So there is pleasure in it too.

Basically, the world is awash with blood and misery of all sorts. It's going to get worse before it gets better, but you are the one guy ready, willing and able to push through to get it done.

[Gez]

Imo the hardest thing is the combination of the both, "Mort et souffrance" was a consideration, but whose? The humans, or the demons? Should it be seen as enjoyable, exciting, or something that's bad and needs to be stopped? I personally interpreted it as a negative (as in the Earth's population getting slaughtered), but Gibbitude makes it sound like it's meant to be the reverse.

Gibbitude isn't a serious word; you can't read that and get in a somber mood about the depressing fate of your fellow humans.

Keep in mind besides that this comes right after a sentence which is about avenging your pet rabbit -- there's something incongruous about being the mucho macho action hero who had a pet bunny, so for most players back then they were already suppressing a chuckle when they see the next sentence -- and the one before that was about bringing forth "eternal damnation and suffering as a true hero would", so we're pretty clearly in self-parody because regardless of context that phrase should get anyone to say "heh, what?".

The Spider Mastermind must have sent forth its legions of hellspawn before your final confrontation with that terrible beast from Hell. But you stepped forward and brought forth eternal damnation and suffering upon the horde as a true hero would in the face of something so evil. Besides, someone was gonna pay for what happened to Daisy, your pet rabbit. But now, you see spread before you more potential pain and gibbitude as a nation of demons run amok in our cities. Next stop, Hell on Earth!

And another clue is the word "potential" here: you see the "nation of demons" as "more potential pain and gibbitude" because the player gets to see them not as horrible monsters who did bad things, but as his victims with which to play. It's a game. Nothing is real about it. If you've beaten the fourth episode, it's that you enjoy shooting monsters and watching them turn into giblets.

[Enjay]

Keep in mind besides that this comes right after a sentence which is about avenging your pet rabbit -- there's something incongruous about being the mucho macho action hero who had a pet bunny, so for most players back then they were already suppressing a chuckle when they see the next sentence -- and the one before that was about bringing forth "eternal damnation and suffering as a true hero would", so we're pretty clearly in self-parody because regardless of context that phrase should get anyone to say "heh, what?"

For what it's worth, this miserable git right here wasn't suppressing a chuckle. The first time I read that, I was annoyed, if anything (not massively, but annoyed nevertheless). To me the flippant nature of that whole outro text, specifically allocating the bunny head on a stake from the end of the real game (i.e. not the proto-DLC episode) kind of undermined the Doom ending and was just silly.

Yeah, I know, I know, it was meant to and even the original bunny scroller was darkly humorous, but it also had shock value with the change of tone in the music as the visuals scrolled from a happy little (clearly wild - not a pet) rabbit to the bloody remains of one displayed on a spike. I know some people that even had difficulty watching that. Babbling on about "your pet rabbit" just felt cheap, cheesy and self referential to me. Let's be honest, even the artwork is like that too. Yeah, it's meant to be, I know.

Other than my personal prejudices, your analysis of the mood of the text is in fact perfect and that's exactly what it was trying to convey.

---

I guess I'm actually just unjustifiably bitter generally about Episode 4. To me, everything about it has always felt tacked on and not quite right and it sort of tarnishes the game for me. The end text is no exception. I'd have been happier if they'd either left it as a PWAD (clearly identifying it as a bolt-on) or actually done a better job of integrating it into the feel of the game and making it a better product too: unique music, perhaps some more graphics (textures, an actual intermap) and maybe an extra monster (even something from Doom2 - which was released 6 months earlier, an archvile, a mancubus or arachnotron or two, whatever: just as a boss in the final map would have been fine).

[Kostov]

This kind of things is why I always end up getting annoyed by translations from languages that I actually understand, so I prefer to play in the original language then and as a result I didn't get involved in the translation project here because I'm not going to use it.

When your translation can’t convey the charm from the original language, you have to develop new ideas that specially fit the language you’re translating into. I’d say going down this direction is what made the Russian translation so appealing as it is right ow.

[Gez]

For what it's worth, this miserable git right here wasn't suppressing a chuckle. The first time I read that, I was annoyed, if anything (not massively, but annoyed nevertheless). To me the flippant nature of that whole outro text, specifically allocating the bunny head on a stake from the end of the real game (i.e. not the proto-DLC episode) kind of undermined the Doom ending and was just silly.

Yeah, it's a drastic change in tone compared to the original text. Not that the texts in the original three episodes were devoid of cheese, but for TFC they went much further. There's the same thing with the end text of NRFTL compared to that of Doom II. It's because they're literally bonus episodes that were tacked on long after they stopped thinking about the game's storyline, short and thin as it was.

---

I guess I'm actually just unjustifiably bitter generally about Episode 4. To me, everything about it has always felt tacked on and not quite right and it sort of tarnishes the game for me. The end text is no exception. I'd have been happier if they'd either left it as a PWAD (clearly identifying it as a bolt-on) or actually done a better job of integrating it into the feel of the game and making it a better product too: unique music, perhaps some more graphics (textures, an actual intermap) and maybe an extra monster (even something from Doom2 - which was released 6 months earlier, an archvile, a mancubus or arachnotron or two, whatever: just as a boss in the final map would have been fine).

I basically agree, and I feel even more strongly about this kind of laziness for Heretic SOTSR and Hexen Deathkings.

[Kinsie]

With the recent addition of the Korean translation to the spreadsheet, it's probably worth mentioning the similar effort by our friends in Japan.

[Graf Zahl]

Once the engine is ready to handle the Korean texts, making Japanese operational should not require any additional work. But first I have to add alternative handlers for all screens that still depend on the original SmallFonts and for the level summary screen.

Of course, no amount of engine-side help will do anything for the multitude of mods out there that hard-code all their text output - that's simply beyond the engine's scope. What's important is that these continue to work with the new system that gets implemented.

[Graf Zahl]

I made an update to the first post outlining the required work on the fonts, in case someone wants to help with this.

[Rachael]

It looks like you made the font document private. I may be interested in the future to help contribute some of those - so I requested access.

[Graf Zahl]

Fixed the link.

Speaking of fonts, what about Hacx and Harmony? They are on the list of localized games, after all, but their fonts are plain English only. If they are deemed not important enough, I'd just activate the generic font replacement there on all non-English languages and block graphics substitution on the menus and summary screens.

[Rachael]

I think they're important enough. I'd really prefer not to see that kind of blocking put in place.

They're freely available, so anyone who wants to contribute can download the games and get the assets in order to do so.

It's possible the developers, themselves, may even have an interest in this.

[Kostov]

It’d be nice to have their support. Because they’re not high on my priority list right now.

[Graf Zahl]

The good thing is, that due to their relatively narrow focus a lot of the constraints with accents which plague the other fonts do not apply here. In most cases it should be possible to just draw the accent on top of the unaltered base character without negatively affecting anything else.

[Xaser]

I'll do the Hacx font -- I may need a reminder ping on Discord or somewhere though this afternoon, since I'm a forgetful goofus.